Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

XXI PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1856-1860

The political campaign of 1856 has thus far been passed by, as it more appropriately belongs to a history of the political movements leading up to secession.

Between the two great parties—Republican and Democratic—the most important issue was the slavery question.

The Republican party, born of the slavery agitation, in its platform (1856) denied

"The authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, of any individual or association of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.

"Declared that the Constitution confers on Congress sovereign power over the Territories of the United States for their government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy and Slavery."

On the other hand, the Democratic party in 1856, fresh from the contest in Congress over the Nebraska Bill and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, denied the right of Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories, and declared it

"The right of the people of all the Territories, including Kansas and Nebraska . . . to form a Constitution, with or without domestic slavery, and be admitted into the Union."

There were other but minor issues discussed in 1856. John C. Fremont was nominated by the Republicans and James Buchanan by the Democrats. Douglas failed of the Presidential prize through violent antagonism from the South, especially from Jefferson Davis, Wm. L. Yancey, Robert Toombs, and other leading pro-slavery statesmen. They distrusted him, though he had led them to victory in 1854 in repealing the 36° 30´ restriction of slavery, and in throwing open, as we have seen, the Nebraska territorial empire to the influx of slaves. He was patriotic, and hence could not be depended on to take the next step towards forcing slavery into the Territories and to favor a dissolution of the Union.

Buchanan, a pliant tool, was elected by a plurality vote over
Fremont and Fillmore, the candidate of the American party. Fremont
carried, with good majorities, all the free States save Indiana,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.

The popular discussion of the slavery question in the campaign was thorough, memorable, exciting, educating, and, though resulting in defeat to the anti-slavery party, it marked the trend of public sentiment, and clearly foreshadowed that it would soon triumph.

The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 still further elucidated to the masses of the people the issues impending, and indicated that the end of slavery extension was near.

The Dred Scott decision, announced March, 1857, had completely overthrown, so far as it could be done by judicial-political obiter dicta, Douglas's Popular Sovereignty theory, leaving him with only the northern end (and that not united) of his party endeavoring to uphold it.

Next came the Presidential campaign of 1860, the last in which a slave party participated.

The Democratic party met in delegate convention in April, 1860, in Charleston, South Carolina, and after seven days of struggle, during which disunion threats were made by Yancey and others, the delegates from the Cotton States—South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas—seceded, for the alleged reason that a majority of the convention adopted the 1856 Democratic platform which upheld the Douglas - Popular Sovereignty doctrine as applied to the Territories.

The seceding delegates had voted for a platform declaring the right of all citizens to settle in the Territories with all their property (including slaves) "without its being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or territorial legislation," and further,

"That it is the duty of the Federal Government in all its departments to protect, when necessary, the rights of persons and property in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends."

This was not only the new doctrine of the Supreme Court, but to it was superadded the further claim that the Constitution required Congress and all the departments of the government to protect the slaveholder with his slaves, when once in a Territory, against territorial legislation or other unfriendly acts. By this most startling doctrine the Constitution was to become an instrument to establish and protect slavery in all the territorial possessions of the Republic.

Douglas failed of nomination at Charleston for want of a two thirds vote of the entire convention as originally organized. The convention adjourned to meet, June 11th, at Baltimore, and the seceding branch of it also adjourned to meet at the same time at Richmond, but later it decided to meet with and again become a part of the convention at Baltimore. At this time the South had control of the Senate, and May 25, 1860, before the convention reassembled, and after a most acrimonious debate into which Douglas was drawn and in which Jefferson Davis bitterly assailed him, the resolutions of the latter were passed, affirming the "property" theory, with the new doctrine of constitutional protection of it in the Territories added.

The convention reassembled, and at the end of five days' wrangle and recrimination, during which the members called each other "disorganizers," "bolters," "traitors," "disunionists," "abolitionists," accompanied by violent threats, it disrupted again, its chairman, Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts, led the bolters and was followed by the delegates generally from the Southern States. They organized at once a separate convention.

Douglas was nominated by the originally organized convention, and John C. Breckinridge by the bolters, each on the sharply defined platform relating to slavery, mentioned above.

Still another political body assembled in Baltimore in 1860, to wit: "The Constitutional Union Convention." It met May 9th. Its platform was intended to be comprehensive and so simple and patriotic that everybody might endorse it. It declared against recognizing any principle other than

"The Constitution of the Country, the Union of the States, and the Enforcement of the Laws."

John Bell of Tennessee was nominated on this broad platform for President, with Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President, both eminently respectable statesmen, but the times were not auspicious for mere generalized principles or mere respectability.

The great Wigwam - Republican Convention met at Chicago, May 16, 1860, with delegates from all the free States, the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Its platform was long, and affirmed the principles of the Declaration of Independence, pronounced against interfering with slavery in the States, denounced the John Brown raid as "among the gravest of crimes," and, in the main, was temperate and conservative.

On the question of slavery in the Territories it was radical:

"That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery in to any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself," etc.

"That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom, . . . and we deny the authority of Congress, or a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory in the United States."

Lincoln of Illinois, Seward of New York, Chase of Ohio, and Cameron of Pennsylvania were the principal candidates for nomination, but the contest turned out to be between Lincoln and Seward, each of whom was regarded eminently qualified for the Presidency and an especial representative of his party on the slavery issue.

Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot, and Hannibal Hamlin, a sturdy New England statesman, was nominated for Vice-President.

Slavery, with its tri-cornered issues, was the sole absorbing question discussed in the campaign. In the South, the Breckinridge wing assailed the Douglas party, which combated it there in turn. In the North, the Republican party attacked furiously both the Douglas and Breckinridge wings of the Democratic party; they, in turn, fighting back and fighting each other.

The Bell and Everett party, though it claimed to be the only party of the Constitution, fell into ridicule, as it really advocated no well-defined principles on any subject whatsoever. Bell and Everett, however, carried Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. Lincoln carried all the Northern States, save three of the electoral votes in New Jersey.

Of the 303 electoral votes, Lincoln had 180, Douglas 12 (Missouri 9 and New Jersey 3), Breckinridge 72, and Bell 39, thus giving Lincoln 57 over all. He was the first and only President elected on a direct slavery issue.

The slavery question, thus sharply presented, was decided at the polls by the people, and their verdict was for freedom in the Territories. No more slave States; no more dilution of slavery by spreading it (as was once advocated by Clay and others) for its amelioration.

It must live or die in States wherein it was established. Neither successful secession, state-rights, nor accomplished disunion could extend it. Like all wrong, it could not stand still; to flourish, it must be aggressive and progressive. To limit it was to strangle it. This its votaries well understood.

In the history of the world there never were more brilliant, more devoted, more earnest, more infatuated, and yet more inconsistent propagandists of the institution of human slavery than in our Republic during the period of the agitation of nullification—state- rights—secession—disunion lines. They were of the Calhoun school. They declaimed in halls of legislation and on the stump and rostrum for "Liberty," and hugged closely human slavery, often professing to believe it of divine right.